What The Hell America!

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is launching a political comeback four years after a series of scandals, including serious allegations of sexual misconduct, derailed his political career. 

In a more than 17-minute long video posted on Saturday to launch his New York mayoral campaign, Cuomo pitched himself as the common-sense leader needed to address crime and urban disorder. 

“I know government can make a positive difference, because we did. Was it easy? No. But together, we achieved historic progressive accomplishments.”  

Cuomo, a onetime Democratic power player, resigned as governor of New York in 2021 after a five-month investigation commissioned by the New York attorney general’s office produced a damning 165-page report outlining evidence he had sexually harassed 11 women while in office. A separate investigation from the Department of Justice found Cuomo harassed 13 women who worked for the state over the course of eight years. Cuomo has denied the allegations of sexual harassment, but he has publicly apologized for overfamiliar contact and off-color jokes that made women uncomfortable.  

In his mayoral campaign launch video, Cuomo touted his experience over many different positions and obliquely addressed the scandals of his tenure as governor. 

“Experience matters. Leading New York City in the midst of a crisis is not the time or the place for on-the-job training,” Cuomo said. “Did I always do everything right in my years of government service? Of course not. Would I do some things differently knowing what I know now? Certainly. Did I make mistakes, some painfully? Definitely. And I believe I learned from them and that I am a better person for it. And I hope to show you that every day. But I promise you this: I know what needs to be done and I know how to do it.”

Cuomo is now among the half-dozen Democrats in the race to challenge embattled incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who has faced a series of his own scandals and was indicted last year on federal charges of bribery, campaign finance violations and conspiracy. After President Donald Trump took office, top officials at the Department of Justice have moved to dismiss the charges against Adams. 

Some recent polling has shown Cuomo, who enjoys high name recognition from his time as governor, in the lead of the prospective Democratic primary, which will be held June 24 using ranked-choice voting. 

Cuomo’s career in New York politics was marked by a hard-charging, confrontational and often combative approach. But at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit New York particularly hard, many Americans looked to Cuomo and his PowerPoint-based news conferences for leadership and comfort. Cuomo positioned himself as a foil to Trump and garnered praise, including winning an international Emmy and securing a more than $5 million book deal. 

But later, Cuomo’s administration would be accused of deliberately underreporting and undercounting COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes. He would also come under scrutiny for using taxpayer-funded staff and resources to write the book, “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.” 

And starting in early 2021, women who had worked for Cuomo started coming forward with allegations that he had sexually harassed them. The first two to come forward were Lindsey Boylan, a former top economic development official in Cuomo’s administration, and Charlotte Bennett, who worked as an executive assistant and health policy adviser in the governor’s office. 

The report from the attorney general’s office, released in August 2021, found that Cuomo harassed 11 women by “among other things, engaging in unwelcome and nonconsensual touching, as well as making numerous offensive comments of a suggestive and sexual nature that created a hostile work environment for women.” The culture of the office, the report said, was “one filled with fear and intimidation.”

Cuomo resigned from the governor’s office a week after the report’s release. He said that the “most serious allegations made against me had no credible factual basis in the report” but apologized for having “truly offended” the women who came forward. 

“I have been too familiar with people. My sense of humor can be insensitive and off-putting. I do hug and kiss people casually, women and men. I have done it all my life. It’s who I’ve been since I can remember,” Cuomo said. “In my mind, I’ve never crossed the line with anyone, but I didn’t realize the extent to which the line has been redrawn.”

Progressive groups were quick to throw cold water on Cuomo’s campaign. 

“New Yorkers don’t need one disgraced elected official vying to replace another,” Jasmine Gripper and Ana María Archila, co-chairs of the New York Working Families Party, said in a statement. “Andrew Cuomo could fill a book with all of his scandals. Then again, he’d probably need one of his staffers to write it for him.”

The fallout from Cuomo’s precipitous downfall extended to his brother Chris Cuomo, then a primetime anchor at CNN who subsequently left the network after he was found to have been advising his brother on the scandal. It also ensnared Times Up, the now-shuttered organization founded to combat sexual harassment and assault in Hollywood. 

The allegations against Cuomo didn’t lead to criminal charges, but civil lawsuits have continued for years following his exit from office. In December, Bennett dropped a federal lawsuit against Cuomo, citing what her lawyer Debra Katz called “an astonishing number of invasive discovery requests and outrageous statements” that Cuomo filed “to embarrass and humiliate her.” A case she filed against the state of New York remains ongoing. 

“Throughout this extraordinarily painful two year case, I’ve many times believed that I’d be better off dead than endure more of his litigation abuse, which has caused extraordinary pain and expense to my family and friends,” Bennett said in a December 9 statement. “I desperately need to live my life. That’s the choice I am making today.”

In a statement, Cuomo’s attorneys called Bennett’s lawsuit “baseless” and said her decision to drop it before she was set to be deposed “should be viewed as a complete capitulation.” Ten days after Bennett dropped her case, Cuomo filed a defamation claim  against Bennett for saying in her statement that Cuomo “sexually harassed her.” Katz, in a statement to multiple news outlets, said the defamation case had “no merit.”   

“There is a long history of using defamation lawsuits to silence and punish accusers of sexual harassment,” Katz said. “It is shameful that Mr. Cuomo has apparently now chosen to go down that path.”

A spokesperson for Katz’s law firm, Katz Banks, declined to comment on Cuomo’s entry into the mayor’s race. 

Cuomo’s return to the political arena comes amid a cultural and political backlash to the #MeToo movement that spurred reckonings for men in positions of power. Trump, a fellow New Yorker, was elected to the presidency in November after a jury found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming the advice columnist E. Jean Carroll. 

Some of the elected officials who previously denounced Cuomo are now getting behind or expressing openness to his mayoral bid. 

“When it comes to confronting political extremism in New York, when it comes to confronting the crisis of crime, we need not a nice guy, but a tough guy like Andrew Cuomo,” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D), who represents the Bronx, said in a statement endorsing Cuomo.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who represents Brooklyn, told NY1 on Wednesday that he “looked forward” to speaking with Cuomo if he got into the race.

“I think he’d be a candidate that a lot of people, as I’ve heard from the district that I represent, would be very interested in checking out,” he said.